It was. On Dez’s arm was his wife Leanna, who was tipsy as usual. The two lawyers’ dislike for each other both in court and out didn’t stop Blair from inviting him and Dez from showing up.
“I can’t believe you’ve brought me here,” Rob said. Usually he is very amiable about the social events I ask him to accompany me to, finding something interesting in all of them to talk about later. Now he sounded grumpy.
“I came to that Christmas party at one of your police pal’s home, you know, the one where the host looked down the front of my dress the whole time, and some young kid drank so much he almost puked on my suede shoes. You were perhaps thinking I would accompany you again this year?”
“Great party,” he said, giving my waist a little squeeze. “I think I’ll go and have some shrimp if that sleazeball left any for the rest of us.”
Dez steered his wife over to the writing cabinet, where they both looked at it carefully, or at least he did. “Nice,” he said to Trevor, sending a cheery wave in my direction. For some reason I expected more than that, Dez being almost as competitive and arrogant as Blair. Perhaps he was determined not to show his disappointment at being bested by Baldwin. So unperturbed by the Mackintosh being in his rival’s hands was Dez that I found myself wondering if the telephone call to Trevor at the very moment Blair was deciding whether or not to purchase the cabinet had been faked, with someone else entirely on the line. Faked or not it had had the desired effect on Blair. There didn’t seem to be any way that I could ask Dez, and it didn’t really make any difference anyway. Blair was going to buy the cabinet that day no matter what it cost. I was also very curious to know what Blair had paid for it, but I didn’t know how to ask that question directly either, and my subtle attempts to find out from both Trevor and Blair had been roundly ignored.
In truth, most people paid the writing cabinet scant attention, being more interested in the food, drink, and company. It caught my eye often, though. There was something about it that bothered me, a feeling that I put down to my ambivalence on the subject of ownership of such a beautiful piece. While I’d love to sell just about anybody an antique for any reason at all, should my advice be asked, it will always be to buy something you like and something you’ll use. You wouldn’t catch me slapping my laptop and coffee mug down on a one-point-five million writing cabinet, believe me. Perhaps more importantly, while Blair was obviously enthralled and that was nice, I always feel that something of this quality, created by the hand of a master like Mackintosh, really belongs to everyone, not just one bazillionaire. I was hoping that after he’d had it for a while, Blair could be persuaded to donate it to an art museum. I was sure there would be many who would prize it.
One who clearly was not only interested but also covetous was the curator of the furniture galleries at the Cottingham Museum. Blair was either rubbing Stanfield Roberts’s nose in it, since the Cottingham was probably eager to have such a piece in its collection, or he was genuinely pleased to show off his acquisition to a man who would certainly agree with me that the Mackintosh belonged in a museum. Stanfield had barely had time to blurt out the required social niceties in the entrance hall before he rocketed right over to the writing cabinet. He posed, there is no other word for it, looking very artistic and interested, his chin resting on his left hand, while the elbow was supported by his right. Finally, after a few minutes of contemplation, he approached the cabinet and had a much closer look. After examining it carefully, he stepped back with a very slight smile on his face. I didn’t know whether this meant he was thrilled to be in the presence of such a wonderful piece, or something else. I do know that Trevor watched his every move and gesture.
“I’d love to have a closer look, privately,” Stanfield said to Blair who approached him. “I wouldn’t dream of doing it now, with everyone here, but might I come over some time this week?”
“Of course,” Blair said. “You and your colleagues at the Cottingham are always welcome to study my collection.” For a man who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, this must have been a rather important moment for Blair.
“I look forward to it,” Stanfield said, but for some reason he looked amused rather than pleased.
As the evening wore on, Leanna, who by this time was really plastered, managed to weave her way over to Blair and immediately spilled some champagne on his jacket, which clearly annoyed him. I can’t say I’ve ever seen Leanna completely sober, but then I only ran into her at events like this. It may well be that she is sober on numerous occasions, but this wasn’t one of them. Clive liked to call her Leanna the Lush—not to her face of course.
As Blair tried to sponge his jacket off with a cocktail napkin, Leanna leaned over and whispered something in his ear, then started pulling on his arm. Blair shook his head, but she persisted, finally leading him over to the writing cabinet. She peered at everything, opening and closing the doors and the drawers before Dez came and dragged her away. After she left, Blair stood stock-still staring at the cabinet for a full minute, I’d say, and then, his face dark as thunder, he went over to speak to Stanfield Roberts of the Cottingham. Both men went over to the cabinet for a brief consultation, before Blair quickly left the room, as the party rolled on without him.
I was standing with Rob, Clive, and Moira in the crowd not far from the cabinet when Blair returned. He was carrying an axe. He walked up to the writing cabinet, swung the blade, and in a few short seconds had hacked it into several pieces. Jaws dropped, hands flew to mouths, and several people started heading for the door. “Wylie!” Blair shouted, looking around the room. “Where are you, you bastard?”
But Trevor was nowhere to be seen. Blair then turned his attention elsewhere. “You!”—he pointed right at me—“are either a crook, too, or incompetent. Either way, you’re finished, babe!” He looked for a moment as if he were going to come right over waving the axe, but Rob stepped between us. Instead, Blair picked up the biggest piece of the furniture, walked to the French doors that opened on to a patio and began to throw the furniture out piece by piece.
“Outta here!” Clive said.
“I’m with you,” Rob replied.
“Just a minute…” I said, looking at the furniture as it flew out the door, but Clive grabbed one arm and Rob the other, and together they hustled me out the front door.
One thing we all agreed on, as we sat around my dining room table eating the lovely dinner Rob had cooked, was that as parties went, that one was a dud. All of them, Rob, Moira and even Clive tried to cheer me up, being the lovely people they are. They were very solicitous, but in a rather irritating way. “You can’t be right every time, hon,” Rob said in a soothing tone, after I’d gone on and on about it. What bothered me most, as I told them at least a hundred times, was that several of our customers were at the party. What, I asked, would they think?
“He didn’t give you the time you needed to make a proper assessment,” Moira said. “You told him it wasn’t definite.”
Surprisingly only Clive, who is usually the bane of my existence even if I’m still in business with him, and who spends most of his time, I’m convinced, trying to come up with ways to annoy me, said anything remotely comforting. “I’d like to see a piece of that wood,” he said after a couple of glasses of wine.
“Why would you want to do that?” Moira asked.
“I didn’t get a chance to get close to it at the party, what with everybody else drooling over it. I’m just wondering,” he said.
“Wondering what?” Moira said. “And no one was drooling over the furniture. They were drooling over the oysters and champagne, and jockeying for position with the celebs, just as you were.”